Talk:British diaspora

Including "Irish" as "British" diaspora
It's deliberately contentious and "baiting" to include the Irish diaspora as being part of the British diaspora. If the articles you linked to were limited to the time period where Ireland was part of the empire, there might be a case. But this is not the case. In addition, the census statistics do not split the Irish diaspora into those with British subject origins, and those without, making it impossible to quantify. Finally, I notice you do not include the British overseas territories, or include the diaspora from other ex-British countries.... --HighKing (talk) 17:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Those other countries are not listed because they were not part of the UK. Ireland was, and was therefore part of the home nation. It is misleading to state that Ireland was part of the "Empire" - it only was insofar as England was, for example. ðarkun coll 23:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This article is called "British diaspora". This article is a collection of links.  It is contentiously confusing to make the claim that the Irish diaspora is a subset of the British diaspora - which it very definitely is not.  It is also WP:OR, with no references provided, to show that the Irish emigrgants identify themselves as part of the British diaspora.  Finally, it is inaccurate as the articles in question are not confined with the period when Ireland was part of the UK.  --HighKing (talk) 12:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I am Irish. As such, when I move abroad, I will become part of the Irish diaspora. I will also be, as an Irish person, a part of the British diaspora - therefore, a 'subset'. --Setanta747 (talk) 17:43, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

You can't be serious. The Republic of Ireland is NOT part of the UK, so they form their own diaspora, just as we have the French, German diaspora. It is most definitely not a subset of anything; that is just nonsensical. I doubt that the above writer is truly Irish after seeing they wrote such a thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.182.154.53 (talk • contribs) 16:16, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed - also Cornish is no more a valid category than any other English region - Wiltshire American, Yorkshire American. Suggest removal of "Cornish" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.189.151.3 (talk) 20:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

China / Hong Kong
Hi, there seems to be a discrepancy between the map and the table as far as China and Hong Kong are concerned. The table says that Hong Kong (or according to the footnote, possibly Hong Kong and China combined) is home to 3,752,031 "British people" (which actually I find quite surprising in itself, but I suppose must be correct according to the definitions used). However, the map shows China at a level that looks like 10,000 to 50,000, while Hong Kong is not separately visible at all. As well as the discrepancy that China is shown on the map but not (separately) in the table, the major problem with the current presentation is that the overwhelmingly largest concentration of British people outside Britain, i.e. in Hong Kong, is not apparent at all on the map. 86.181.172.218 (talk) 00:33, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Including the vast bulk of the (Chinese) population of Hong Kong makes this article look rather silly... no-one in Britain classes 3.5 million inhabitants of this part of China as 'British' whatever the technicalities may be. The term 'diaspora' implies being scattered from the home country...which Hong Kong Chinese clearly are not. The Hong Kong Chinese should be treated in this article as a separate and distinct entitity ... if they should be included at all Vauxhall1964 (talk) 12:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Ethnicity
Is this article about only ethnically British people(English,Scott etc) or about those "British" who have immigrant back ground? At least it should mentioned how many percentege of British people living abroad have immigrant back ground??Ovsek (talk) 06:08, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed move of Anglo-African to British in Africa
See Talk:Anglo-African. Helen (talk) 16:01, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

People of British descent born outside the UK
This article gives the number of British people living abroad, but the British diaspora includes people from anywhere who are of British ancestry. This includes many millions in the US, several million in Canada and several million in Australia, yet this isn't mentioned in the article. Jim Michael (talk) 13:15, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Table synthesis
This is our source. Mixing other estimates in the table constitutes WP:SYNTHESIS. 93.109.179.224 (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Links to countries
Should all of the countries in the table include a flag and links to each of them? This seems to be the convention in tables related to demographics. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 12:37, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Links would probably make sense, and as far as I understand WP:MOSFLAG, it's acceptable to use flags in this context too. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:40, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Dubious
Are the numbers right? The number given for Australia is greater than the number of British-born residents of Australia, and not all of those (one would expect) would fall into the citizenship categories specified. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:29, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for explaining your rationale for the "dubious" tag, PalaceGuard008. The IPPR estimate is indeed 1.3 million, as reported here. I think that as long as we make clear that this is the IPPR's estimate, not a definitive figures, then there isn't a problem. Cordless Larry (talk) 16:39, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for looking into it Cordless Larry. The BBC site makes it clear that these are estimates for 2006. I would suggest this should be made clear in the table, as it seems misleading to present figures that are almost 10 years old as current. Also, the definition for "Britons" (again according to the BBC site) is "British nationals and/or people born in the UK believed to have lived there for a year or longer", which is not quite the same as what is suggested by the introduction to the table in this article. It also suggests that they use different criteria in different countries, but it is not clear which in which. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:59, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree that this could be made clearer, PalaceGuard008. I'll have a go at making it so. I'm not sure they are using different definitions for different countries, though. Cordless Larry (talk) 20:41, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your amendments Cordless Larry. I have taken off the dubious tag, but it remains unclear to me whether it is correct that the figures are based on a definition of Britons as "British subjects" (as defined in the article). The link to the report itself is dead, and the BBC says the definition is "British nationals and/or people born in the UK believed to have lived there for a year or longer". Did you see the definition of what is counted as Britons in the report itself, before the link died? Did it match what is in the article now, or does it match what the BBC has? I am happy to go with what is in the article now if that was what was in the report, but if we cannot be sure what the report itself said, my view is that we should use the BBC's definition, as that is the best source we have available now. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:26, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, PalaceGuard008. I've updated that link, but as far as I recall, the full text of the report was never available online. I think I had a copy of it, so I will see if I can dig it out when I get time and check the definitions. Cordless Larry (talk) 16:27, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Out-of-date
The data in this article is now over a decade old - are there more recent sources we could use? Pseudomonas(talk) 21:38, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Table 16 here has data for 2015. I've not looked through it in detail to see how complete it is. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:54, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned references in British diaspora
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of British diaspora's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "auto": From Australia:  From Age of Discovery: Arnold 2002, p. 7. From Azerbaijan: The State Statistical Committee of the Azerbaijan Republic, The ethnic composition of the population according to the 2009 census. {azstat.org From British people: See: British American – The United States American Community Survey reported in 2009 that 40,234,652 Americans identified themselves as having English, Scottish, Welsh and Ulster-Scottish ancestry. 1,172,050 reported to have British ancestry. 2009 American Community Survey.  From Ulster Scots people: David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 608–11. From Dutch diaspora:  From Scottish Canadians: Church, College, and Clergy, Page 76, Brian J. Fraser – 1995 From Scottish Americans: </li> <li>From French diaspora: </li> <li>From Maltese people: </li> <li>From Scottish diaspora: </li> <li>From Emigration from Kosovo: </li> <li>From Anglo-Americans: Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.:1994--Merriam-Webster See original definition (definition #1) of Anglo in English: It is defined as a synonym for Anglo-American--Page 86</li> <li>From United States: </li> <li>From British Empire: Porter, p. 8.</li> </ul>

Reference named "auto1":<ul> <li>From Emigration from Kosovo: </li> <li>From Scottish Americans: </li> <li>From British people: </li> <li>From Age of Discovery: Mancall 2006, p. 17.</li> <li>From Scottish Canadians: Steve Murdoch, "Cape Breton: Canada's 'Highland' Island?" Northern Scotland 1998 18: 31-42</li> </ul>

Reference named "auto2":<ul> <li>From Emigration from Kosovo: </li> <li>From Scottish Americans: </li> <li>From British people: </li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 06:38, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Population figures
I have reverted these changes. The change from 10.7 to 17 per cent of the US population was in a sentence that includes "the largest proportions of people of self-identified ethnic British descent...", so including self-identified "Americans" does not work here. It's also original research to calculate figures based on an assumption that all self-identified Americans are of British ancestry. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:16, 27 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Cordless Larry (talk)
 * It has been established by demographers. It is not original research:


 * Sharing the Dream 2004 p. 58


 * "The 'American Americans' typically have ancestors who came to the United States so long ago that they have no ties of any kind to the Old World, so they identify themselves simply as "American". Their forefathers, of course, came from elsewhere, but one can assume two things, in most cases - that the migration occurred many years ago and the migration probably occurred from the British Isles, the most culturally congenial part of the world for Americans throughout the centuries."


 * Sharing the Dream. Pulera, Dominic J. 2004. p 58. The Continuum International Publishing Group
 * books.google.com/books?id=SVoAXh-dNuYC&pg=PA58


 * '''History of English Immigration to America: British Ancestry

'''
 * "The majority of these people simply describe themselves as "American", the title that was so fiercely fought for in the American War of Independence." http://www.emmigration.info/english-immigration-to-america.htm

111818b (talk) 17:43, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * None of that establishes that everyone who says their ancestry is American in a survey is, or considers themselves to be, of British descent. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:57, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Ethnic British People
There is a clear definition of what the word diaspora means. This article has been well written and improved by many contributors, yet it appears that people with an agenda and now trying to undo the legitimacy of this article. Ethnicity is subjective. People are able to define themselves as what ever ethnicity they wish. I and many others identify our ethnicity as British. The term itself only came into popular usage in the mid-20th century and has a definition that indeed legitimises British as an ethnicity. One may have many ethnic labels. The fact is that people who are ethnic British can be Scottish, English, Welsh, or Northern Irish as well as British. The reason why the distinction of ethnic British as opposed to just British is made on the article is that, without it, anyone who acquires a British passport and then moves outside of United Kingdom could be classified as the diaspora. This undermines both the legitimacy of the article and the meaning of the term diaspora. For this reason, ethnic British must remain. Any changes to that need to be debated here and good reason why the term ethnic British should be removed must be specified. 49.198.44.248 (talk) 23:34, 28 October 2019 (UTC)


 * You see this link: British ethnicity? You see how it redirects to British people? You see how there is no one British ethnicity for there to be an article about and hence the need for it to redirect to an article that is not primarily about any fictional unified "British ethnicity" and instead describes the various origins and ethnicities of British people? You see how using "ethnicity" in the article is, at best, spurious, confusing and uninformative and, at worst, giving credence to racist views of what constitutes a British person? A British person of any ethnicity, living outside the UK, has as much right to consider themselves a member of a British Disaspora as a white person in the same situation. Even if that were not the case, we should not use meaningless and unreferenced POV euphemisms in Wikipedia articles. When we actually mean white people we should say "white people", link it, and provide a valid reference to show that we use the term legitimately.
 * Either way, you need to drop this stick and drop it now. --DanielRigal (talk) 19:50, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * In an effort to find compromise here that suits people determined to state that there is no such thing as an ethnic British person, for reasons unknown but hidden under claims of racism—-of all things to bring into this—-I have amended the article in a way that should appeal to all. 49.198.44.248 (talk) 11:21, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I shall add that I despise being colourised and highly resent the notion that I am talking about “white people”. Skin colour doesn’t equal race. It is possible to have an identity that relates to an ancestral land yet not “resembling” the stereotype of that place. For the same reason that British MOST DEFINITELY IS an ethnicity, you don’t have to have “white” skin to be ethnic British. Not all native Americans are “red”, not all Japanese are “yellow”, and not all Māori are “brown”. Educate yourselves. 49.198.44.248 (talk)| —Preceding undated comment added 11:26, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * This is racist to deny that British people amongst others Czech or Chinese are ethnic groups.
 * It's focusing specifically on one ethnic group and saying they don't exist.
 * Indian Diaspora is a page, and represents Kashmiri, Bengali, Tamil peoples within the Indian ethnicity. So this is a double standard. 80.195.3.151 (talk) 13:25, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

"StatUS" ref
looks like you forgot to fill in the definition of this ref when you added it.&#32;-- Fyrael (talk) 21:52, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Remove Bermuda ref at intro
The page is about the British diaspora, as in originiating from the British isles. Bermuda isn't in the british isles, nor are most Bermudans of British ancestry. It would be more accurate to reference the Falklands. As most falklanders have British ancestry. 80.195.3.151 (talk) 22:31, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Merging 'British ancestral origins by country' tables
I propose merging the two tables in the 'British ancestral origins by country' section of the article to make the article more concise and clear. This would be similar to German_diaspora as below:

Diaspora in South America
I have removed some dubious sources that claimed 840,000 Brazilians and 700,000 Chileans have British ancestry. Looking at the sources provided, the Chilean figure includes Irish descendants (as per the British Chilean article, which cites the same source) which, as other editors have stated above, is problematic. Furthermore, the link is dead and inaccessible.

As for the Brazilian figure, the number cited is simply not provided in the sources. The best course of action seems to be the removal of the figures until a reliable source can be found. Patoruzú 1990 (talk) 16:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)